Magic is a difficult game on its own to play and play well. Each turn has its own series of decisions to make on when to play certain spells, to attack, what to attack with, etc. It's a game as complex as chess... if the chess board and all the pieces kept changing every two minutes. Now take all that decision making and multiply it out by seven, eight, ten matches in a single day, all with the pressure of limited margin of error and the chance for one person in the room to qualify for a Pro Tour event. Quickly you can see that the game of tournament Magic is a lot different than a pickup draft with your friends or slinging EDH decks across the kitchen table. Even bringing your deck down for Friday Night Magic doesn't match the premier tournament experience - the stakes are lower, the rules enforcement is more lenient, and if you're at the top tables late in a FNM, there aren't 50 people watching your match.

Winning in premier events is more than just play skill. You can get lucky, pick up a deck, and do well in a tournament, but repeating that success, tournament after tournament, is a product of process, planning, and endurance more than just playskill. The best players in the world don't just play more Magic (in fact, some might play less than the typical causal player that plays a lot with friends and FNMs every week), they have a plan going into every tournament of how to prepare mentally and physically.

Playtesting

Putting the time in to playtest a format is just as much a test of your endurance as tournament day is. Playing hundreds of games with seemingly nothing on the line is a major drain on players mentally, and it leads most players (myself included) to playtest less than they should or not at all. There's a wealth of articles devoted to playtesting strategies and ideas, but here are some common mistakes I find I make or have made in the past during playtesting.

  • Playtesting One Deck - You think you have *the* deck for the field. You might be wrong. Even if you're not wrong, the best way to know how the other popular decks in the field work is to play them. Even if you know how the other decks work, the only way to know an automatic keeping hand from a marginal hand from an automatic mulligan hand (and using that information to read your opponent while they're looking at their hand and making their mulligan decision) is to see lots of hands from those decks and see how they perform against an unknown opponent pre-board and against a known opponent post-board. The more decks you play with, the more comfortable you'll be in decision making when playing against those decks because you'll know what they're capable of and what weaknesses those decks have to exploit.
  • Playtesting Without Sideboarding - Less than half your games are played with your starting 60 cards. The same ratio should be taken for your playtest games - less than half of the games should be played pre-board. Tiago Chan suggests a four to six ratio in his article on playtesting from 2007 on StarCityGames's premium site and that seems like a good ratio. He also suggest that if you're testing out different sideboard cards, to play games where you draw six random cards and the sideboard card you're testing to see how it performs.
  • Casual Playtesting - Playing in a Competitive REL tournament can be very intimidating compared to playing in FNMs and local tournaments. I was talking with someone playing in their first GP this past weekend in Oakland, and he wanted to make sure his sleeves were perfect and unmarked and that he didn't make any procedural mistakes that might cost him a game here or there. While worrying about marked sleeves probably isn't part of your playtest concerns, playing as though you were actually in a tournament should be. Take notes like you would in a tournament (I use a composition book and try to takes notes on the cards my opponent plays as they play them so I have reference on what they played in later games, and what they may have sided out against me) draw, keep score, and make your decisions as though your tournament life was on the line. If you build up those habits enough, they become second nature - making sure you've only got seven (or less, depending on your mulligans) cards in your hand before you look at it; making sure you're only drawing one card a turn; keeping track of life changes in such a way that if there's a discrepancy, you can track it back, etc. Much like good habits in real life, good habits in playtesting are built up in the same manner.
      • The Night Before

      I like to think of tournaments like I used to think about tests. The night before, I don't want to stress or think about them. Just like there's really not a lot of benefit in cramming for tests, there's really not a lot of benefit in spending all night making last minute changes to your deck or changing your deck altogether (I made this mistake in Oakland, audibling out of Living End to a deck that wasn't clearly superior and that I hadn't put the proper playtesting into). Just get a good night's sleep, get everything prepared so you're not rushed in the morning, and take your mind off of Magic. You'll need all the mental rest you can get for twelve hours of decision making if you wanna take home that blue envelope.

      On Site

      The most important thing you can do is stay hydrated. Bring a water bottle and locate the nearest dispenser or drinking fountain and refill your bottle between each match. Bring along some high-energy snacks as well like granola bars or jerky as well. The tournament hall is going to be very stuffy, very humid, and very warm usually. As for tournament preparation, make sure you have pen(cil) and paper, counters, sleeves, etc. If you have concerns about your sleeves, ask a judge before the event and they'll let you know. If you have to buy new sleeves, shuffle the sleeves themselves (especially if they're in two separate packages) and shuffle your deck before sleeving up. I prefer to sleeve my sideboard in the same sleeves as the deck, other people leave them unsleeved or sleeved in different colors and transfer cards between sleeves when they board. In between games, take five minutes or so to write down the pertinent information on the game, any plays you should review in the future, etc., then pack that game away and get it out of your mind, win or lose. You don't want to dwell on losses or focus myopically on victories - results-based analysis just isn't useful with a one-match sample set.

      With the proper preparation, you'll be able to use the grind of an all-day tournament to your advantage, having confidence in your decisions while lesser-prepared competition falters under the pressure.